Recently I have had the desire to get back into learning a little programming. I will never be much more than a minor hobbyist programmer so I think that something like Python might be good for me to try.

The problem is that I am living in Japan so I can't just run down to the book store and browse around for a book. I can browse the web for tutorials and will start doing that this weekend. For now though, I would like to ask if anyone here has any suggestions for books on learning Python.

I would like something that has some excercises. I have Learning Python by O'Reilly. It's ok for a sky high overview of the language, but I need something a little meatier. Also, suggestions on something about Object Oriented Programming as well would be really nice. Since Python is OOP I should really get a grasp of those concepts as well.

I re-downloaded Lott's books and damn he did a nice job on them – the formatting is gorgeous and, while I haven't read them yet, skimming through them they look very promising. His Python book is 568 pages.

FWIW having worked in both Python and Ruby (admittedly more extensively in the former) I prefer Python quite a bit, but that's just preference I suppose.

Having learned Python quite a while after learning other languages, esp. OOP languages, I can't really be much help in this thread though. For me Python was just another syntax for expressing rather familiar concepts. I found the manual & other materials online to be useful (Barm referred to these already).